The progress of the Royal Army through Westchester-county was distinguished by the outrages which were inflicted on the inhabitants, without respect to persons or sexes, on both those who were entirely conservative and disposed to favor the Royal cause and those who were radically and actively opposed to it -- as General Washington described them, while forewarning the Governor of New Jersey of what the fate of that people would be, "they have treated all, " here, without discrimination : the distinction of

1 Memoirs of General Heath, 84.

2 General Washington to the President of the Congress, " Peekskill, 11 "November, 1776."

3 Instructions of General Washington to General Lee, "Head-quarters, "near the White-Plains, 10 November, 1776;" Bettirn of the Conti nental Troops under the command of General Lee, " North-Castle, No- '• vember 16, 1776 ;" Memoirs of General Heath, 84.

4 General Howe to Lord George Germaine, "New-Yoek, 30 November " 1776."

' General Howe to Lord George Germaine, " New-York, 30 November ."1776;" [Hall's] History of the ami War in America, i., 212'; etc. '[Hall's] History of the Oiril War in America, i., 212.

"Whig and Tory has been lost in one general scene " of ravage and desolation." ' In that work, the Hessians and the British troops were equally notorious ; and what the soldiery spared, was frequently carried away by the soldiers' wives and mistresses, who formed a part of the retinue of the Army. 8 Indeed, the warmth of controversy called out from one of the most prominent Loyalists of that period, the following graphic description of the outrages inflicted by the King's troops: "The inhuman treatment alluded to, " was the indiscriminate plunder suffered to be com- "mitted, by the soldiery under his command, on " Staten Island, Long Island, the White Plains, and " in the Province of New Jersey, where friend and " foe, loyalist and rebel, met with the same fate -- a "series' of continued plunder, which was a disgrace to " an Army pretending to discipline, and which, while " it tended to relax the discipline of the troops, could " not fail to create the greatest aversion, even in the "breast of loyalty itself, to a service which, under the " fair pretence of giving them protection; robbed them, " in many instances, of even the necessaries of life." 9 But the sufferings endured by the inhabitants of Westchester-county were not confined to those which were produced by the outrages inflicted by the Royal Army and its followers.